Re-Parenting - Part 3 - Limbic Brain

welcome to another friday night we've been doing a series on what it looks like to heal from complex trauma and we've been kind of using the metaphor that healing from complex trauma is reparenting yourself you didn't get the things you needed in your first time around as a child and so now you have to re-parent yourself and learn how to meet your needs learn the right boundaries learn the right ways of coping healthy ways of relating all of those things are involved in re-parenting and today i want to talk about parenting is working with a child who is in their limbic brain and i would say to me that one of the biggest issues that people face in their healing germ journey from complex trauma is learning to re-parent their limbic brain somebody has said this children would be much easier to raise if they came into the world with a fully developed cortex and what that means is this as you look at how the brain develops it starts with the brain stem developing in the uterus and then in the child years it's the limbic brain that is developing and the cortex begins to develop in childhood later years adult years so what that means is the limbic brain is the main part of the brain for the child and the limbic brain is the emotion center of the brain it is responsible for survival in the brain and so the child isn't able to access a cortex because it's not fully developed so they live life out of their limbic brain that makes for the beauty and innocence of childhood but it creates all kinds of challenges but the limbic brain that emotion center we love that in a child because everything they experience elicits emotions there's a beauty to it and it's just very real to them and so the child out of the limbic brain can be a wonderful wonderful thing but here's what causes the challenge characteristic number one of your limbic brain is it's all about instant gratification it does not think in terms of long-term consequences long-term results it just wants to feel good now it is all about i just want positive emotions all the time the second characteristic comes out of that and then what it basically says is the wisdom of any decision now is based on will it make me feel good now so should i watch tv or do my homework well tv will make me feel good now homework will not so it's wise to a child to want to watch tv now should i do my chores or just be lazy and play video games well what gives me instant gratification so the decision is made or considered wise only if it gives me instant positive emotions that is a huge challenge and then the third characteristic is that decisions are made not just on our whether they give me instant gratification but they're also made based on how i'm feeling so should i do my homework or sit around well i don't feel like doing my homework so i'm not going to do my homework i feel like being lazy so i'm going to be lazy so what am i feeling in the moment that makes me then decide what i want to do so my emotions guide my decisions so you only want to do what you feel like doing it doesn't matter if it's healthy or not it's only if i feel like it so emotions guide everything so you can see that for a parent that is going to present challenges because if you let the child live out of their limbic brain they're going to end up with a whole lot of bad habits they're going to end up doing things that they're going to later regret that the long-term consequences are going to be very negative now let's bring in complex trauma it adds to this challenge complex trauma keeps a child stuck in the limbic brain even when they move into adulthood because complex trauma is all about danger and the limbic brain is all about survival it's all about you have to stay safe now it thinks in terms of instant protection instant gratification so the child doesn't develop normally into their cortex like a healthy child would with complex trauma you stay stuck in your limbic brain so even though you might be 40 your brain is still dominated by your limbic part not by the cortex it's still making decisions based on emotions and instant gratification what it feels like not based on long-term consequences not based on wise thinking so complex trauma does that but there's a second thing that complex trauma does the design of the limbic brain is it adds beauty to life and it pulls you towards beauty so you experience emotions and you want if they're good and it's a good experience that gives the good emotions you want to repeat that if it's painful emotions it pulls you towards i want to solve this and you resolve it and get back to healthy but what happens when you have a child in a negative limbic brain because of circumstances that are unjust abuse neglect abandonment being hurt regularly rejected criticized they can't resolve that they want to that's the original poll i need to resolve this so i can get back to a healthy place they can't resolve that so the limbic brain is stuck feeling negative emotions all the time and now it pulls me to fight flight or freeze it pulls me to self-destructive behaviors in the long run so complex trauma changes the pull that the limbic brain creates on a person from being a positive pull to being a negative pull and that is a tragedy that comes out of complex trauma so let me just put you in the perspective of being a parent either to parent your children who have limbic brain predominant behavior or re-parenting yourself who are still limbic brain predominant because of your complex trauma so what do you need to know as a parent if you are going to help your child move out of their limbic brain into their cortex and develop into their cortex in a healthy way so the first thing i want you to understand and it's important concept is this all of us in all of life our headspace affects our orientation about how we want to live if i'm in a good head space i want to open my heart to people i want to love i want to give if i'm in a bad head space i want to isolate i want to lash out i'm negative so my head space is key in how i choose to live so what makes this good head space well for a child in their limbic brain to be in a good head space means that you have mainly positive emotions in your limbic brain that you feel joy that you feel a happiness a contentedness because your needs are met you feel safe you feel at peace you accept yourself you're okay with yourself you feel respected that is a positive limbic brain which in a child creates a positive head space which causes the child to want to be loving to be giving the second thing that you want to begin to happen as the child develops is that even in days when you have predominantly painful emotions you're able to go to your cortex and make decisions about choices of attitudes that you will choose to love people you would choose to open your heart to people you will choose to accept your circumstances so you're able to get the attitudes to dominate the negative emotions and therefore get your limbic brain in a good place so what i want you to see is a good head space is dependent on a well-managed limbic brain so in a child that means they have to have a good limbic space environment so they have lots of positive limbic space hop uh limbic emotions happening for an adult it's learning to manage your limbic brain so it doesn't control you but you choose your attitudes so for a child if they are in an environment where they always have negative emotions it's not safe they're being hurt rejected abuse they got a lot of pain so therefore they are not in a good head space what is going to happen they are now going to lash out in anger hurt others they are going to rebel they're going to close their heart a negative limbic place for them as a child creates all kinds of unhealthy dynamics and actions so here's what i want you to get in order for a child to be in a good limbic place so they have a good head space they need a good limbic environment they need an environment that creates a healthy limbic brain in other words for a child to develop in a healthy way they need a healthy limbic brain which means they need an environment that creates and facilitates a positive limbic brain so what does that look like well number one it starts with an environment that the parents create that is dependent on the parents health they need an environment that is loving unconditional love where they feel totally accepted for who they are where they are nurtured where people they care about connect with them where the people creating the environment regulate their own emotions where the boundaries are consistent where it's fair and just if they have that kind of environment it creates positive limbic brain emotions that's what they need to get health to be healthy so the healthy limbic brain in the child depends on the healthiness of the parents but then parents need to give children lots of limbic brain positive experiences so they don't just need a safe healthy environment they need extra things activities outings vacations that create positive limbic brain experiences and positive limbic brain memories so they need hugs they need fun they need music that they enjoy they need to connect with parents with friends they need lots of affection they need to be taken out to enjoy nature to go on outings to experience good movies sports fun games all of those create positive limbic brain experiences so a positive environment then add a whole bunch of positive experiences for the olympic brain that is where we start then you come to the more challenging things you have to then provide healthy boundaries for this limbic brain so you realize that a child or our limbic brain if you're from complex trauma does not like healthy boundaries because healthy boundaries are all about long-term consequences not instant gratification and so what you find is that to a child often the things that are most beneficial to them they don't like because they don't give instant gratification so they don't like going to school and doing homework and eating their vegetables and not having candy before supper and doing their chores and getting up and going going through a healthy routine every morning they don't like those kind of things they feel restrictive they feel like they take their fun away so they resist healthy boundaries so they need parents with a wise cortex who knows that these boundaries may not feel like fun now they don't give instant gratification but one day the consequences are going to be worth it and the child will one day realize that those boundaries were for their best they guaranteed long-term satisfaction and one day they'll thank their parents for those healthy boundaries but as a child they don't like those boundaries so how then does a parent enforce healthy boundaries since a child naturally resists them so basically the main way of enforcing healthy boundaries should be positive rewards for the child following the boundaries doing their chores doing their homework so that can be just validating them hugging them praising them that could be telling other people do you know what my son just did wow i'm so proud of him that could be for a young child putting a sticker on a chart to say they did their chores today that could be giving them a treat for doing it as a reward or an allowance or taking them on an outing taking them out for ice cream all of those things are positive reinforcers so the child goes i don't like this boundary but when i do it i get a positive reward i get dopamine in my brain which says i want to do it again in some cases you may need to go to a negative consequence so if you don't do this then there will be a negative consequence now let me just say something about this because this is very tricky for many who come out of abuse i am not talking about a harsh abuse type of thing let me give you an example they did with dogs a study where if a dog didn't do what it was told it was put outside and what they found is the dog could tolerate about 10 minutes of being outside and if it wasn't brought back in and allowed to reconnect with its master but was forced to remain outside kind of as a punishment the dog would start to shut down i think the same applies to children if you say to a child settle down i'll give you a reward if you settle down and they don't settle down and you say okay then you need to take a time out don't make that a long punitive type thing the design is not to hurt the child to shame the child to tear the child down the child the the goal is that the child feels the absence of connection that they want to reconnect so they want to get back and do the healthy it is a motivator to get back inside the healthy boundaries basically what i want you to see is use positive reinforcement as the main way of enforcing boundaries and do that for yourself today as an adult don't think oh i'm too old for those kind of positive rewards it's okay to do those even when you are an adult so the first challenge in dealing with the limbic brain is boundaries the second challenge for a parent is teaching a child to persevere to do things even when it's no longer a novelty that gives a lot of excitement and fun but st seems to be coming a boring routine i remember the days day when my children asked for a puppy and so my wife and i said to them well if we get a puppy you're going to be responsible for the puppies so you're going to have to make sure they get fed every day go for a walk every day clean up their poop from the backyard all of our kids said oh we'll do that we'll do that we're so excited about getting puppy yes we commit ourselves to do those things and we said well it's going to get hard there's going to be days you're not going to want to do it no no no no we're going to do it so we got a puppy guess what they did it for about two weeks then after that it was oh i don't feel like it oh can somebody else do it and what you realize is when they're in their limbic brain their limbic brain like having a puppy as long as it was fun but as soon as it felt like work well having a puppy was no longer fun and so they didn't want to do the chores and so what we had to do as parents is teach them if you take on a puppy you do it even when it when it's fun and even when it's not fun because you make a commitment and that means you persevere so you act not just out of your limbic brain you now act out of your cortex so you go this ch this puppy is now depending on me so i better be there for it whether i feel like it or not if i am going to learn to love i can't just love people if i feel like it i have to love them on days when i even don't feel like it and so you begin to help them understand that commitments are great but you can't just live out of a limbic brain if you're going to maintain a commitment you have to get to your cortex and that means you do the right thing even on days you don't feel like it so perseverance such an important quality if you're going to succeed in life but it's challenged by a limbic brain and so you have to train yourself to persevere but then you also have to teach a child to think beyond the immediate end you have to teach them to think long term long term goals so you might have a child that is fascinated with hockey and they have posters of their favorite hockey players on the wall and they want to be a hockey player what you begin to impress on them if you want to be a hockey player that's your long-term goal you can't just live out of your olympic brain because if you're going to be a professional hockey player you're gonna have to practice when other kids are done their little weekly hockey hockey practice and have gone to play video games you're gonna have to get up early in the morning and do extra exercise and hard work and practice and then because you got to get up early to practice more you got to organize your other responsibilities chores and home homework so that you can get them done so if you want to reach this long-term goal you better think through and organize your life so that you can attain that goal because you're never going to reach that goal if you just live out of your limbic brain and so that's what parents do with children is get them to see the benefits of that long-term goal and that helps motivate them to get out of their limbic brain to get into their cortex to plan their life to do stuff they don't even feel like doing to do stuff when other friends aren't doing those things that becomes an important part let me give you one other piece of this limbic brain thing that i hope will help you just appreciate the limbic brain and parenting the limbic brain it has to do with what we refer to as concrete versus abstract learning so concrete learning is basically based on the experiences of the limbic brain abstract learning concepts is based on the cortex so what you can see is a child doesn't understand concepts when they're a small child because their cortex hasn't developed they only understand their limbic brain experiences of things concrete learning so watch how this works how you go from concrete to abstract from limbic learning to cortex learning so you have the concept of beauty a child hears beauty that means nothing to them because they are in their limbic brain they think in terms of emotions then they see niagara falls then they see mountains then they stand by the ocean for the first time and they are just overwhelmed by the greatness of it the beauty of it they feel a whole bunch of emotions aw and then they go that's beauty so what helps them get the concept of beauty is experiencing the emotions first of standing before beauty so their limbic brain is what educates their cortex so they begin to understand the contact the concept so the concept now is not void of emotions it's not sterile it's not empty it's not just a academic thing no it's a concept that is full of beautiful emotions think of love you say love to a child they don't understand that concept so how do they begin to understand love by experiencing it by hugs affection by parents caring for them when they skin their knee by parents hugging them when they are have hurt feelings by parents getting up in the middle of the night when they're sick and making sacrifices for them by parents praising them and they feel the emotions of love and they go that's what love is sacrifice encouragement nurture validation affection and then now they have the concept of love but that concept isn't just a void of academic information it is now full of emotions it's full of all these different factors it contains so much now because their limbic brain informed their cortex and that is how we develop in our understanding of things so it's actually a beautiful thing that a child begins by learning through their limbic brain because they get the feelings and the of the emotions they get the concrete experience of that that then informs the concept and so now whenever they think of love they just draw on all of the thousands of experiences and emotions they've had around that concept and what it entails so if you've had complex trauma you didn't get those kind of things so what you're doing now is experiencing love experiencing beauty so that you can now begin to experience the emotions of those things so that you can fill out your concept of those things that becomes so important okay let me give you some other tools that a parent wants to teach a child so that the child can learn to manage their limbic brain so number one patience i think one of the most torturous things for my children would be when they come came to me and said dad could we get this or dad could we do this and i would say let me think about it because what that meant was they weren't going to get an instant answer yes or no they are going to have to wait for an answer and they didn't like waiting because they wanted it now part of the reason why i said let me think about it wasn't because i didn't know what to say to them then i might have known yes or no but because i wanted them to learn the value of patience even though they hated learning patience i knew that later in life they would be grateful that they had learned how to be patient and so it was something i had to force on them in their younger years so that one day they would appreciate it with that one goes the second one which is learning to sit in uncomfortable emotions we want uncomfortable emotions resolved right away so that we feel good right again so a child doesn't like sitting in uncomfortable motions they want everything resolved now but not every emotion is resolvable instantly there's some painful emotions that take time to resolve and so we need to learn to be patient with the resolution process which means sitting in those uncomfortable emotions as we work to resolve them so grief anxiety all of those things require some sitting in uncomfortable emotions and our limbic brain does not like that and so we have to train children or ourselves to do that and it feels like torture thirdly we have to teach people who are in their limbic brain to play the tape to the end to get into their cortex and think beyond instant gratification or instant safety to think of long-term consequences that becomes such an important skill for all of us to learn to play the tape to the end the fourth thing we want them to understand is to realize when they're in their limbic brain and that when they're in their limbic brain they don't see things accurately your limbic brain if you come out of complex trauma causes you to see distortions therefore it's important to begin to be able to identify whether you're in your limbic brain or in your cortex then with that realize that when you are in your limbic brain that's when you are most vulnerable to lie to yourself to deceive yourself so let me give you an example you fall in love that means you're in your limbic brain you've got all these positive emotions happening oxytocin serotonin dopamine all going on in your brain you feel great your friends say that is not a healthy person that is a sick person don't get involved with that person but you're feeling so good in your limbic brain what do you do you put on rose-colored glasses you ignore the warning signs the red flags you deceive yourself and so what we have to learn two skills number one if i realize i'm in my limbic brain i'm in love or i'm angry or i'm full of fear i have to realize okay i'm in my limbic brain therefore i'm going to be distorted i'm probably going to lie to myself or be the self-deceived i have to get out of that into my cortex i need to know how to get out of it and into my cortex so grounding exercise mindfulness exercises but then another piece to getting into my cortex is i need somebody in my life whose objective who's wise who can tell me you're deceiving yourself you're distorting reality and i need to respect them enough that i listen to them that is so important in dealing with our limbic brain but then realize that when you're in your limbic brain it is almost impossible to reason with you in a realistic healthy way you're there's an irrationality that comes into our thinking when we're in our limbic brain and people can't reason with us productively the next thing we need to be aware of is when we're in our limbic brain that's when we want to shift all of our boundaries in our life from healthy to unhealthy oh i'm in my limit brain okay i'm just gonna snack tonight when i usually have good boundaries around eating in the evening or i'm in my limbic brain i'm just gonna phone that friend or buy something when i usually have good boundaries around those kind of toxic people or my spending so it's in my limbic brain that i'm most vulnerable to shift boundaries to make them unhealthy the final thing is realize especially now as you're healing from complex trauma that your limbic brain needs lots of encouragement it needs help to stay in a positive headspace and so encourage yourself and encourage others and encourage children let me end with talking about your limbic brain in recovery just some extra challenges i say to clients all the time that i think probably that one of the greatest challenges in recovery is your limbic brain but having said that the journey of recovery is learning to heal your limbic brain and manage your limbic brain in a healthy way so you don't recover unless your limbic brain heals and you learn to manage it but that is so challenging because for most people they have thousands of things that trigger their limbic brain into action and when their limbic brain gets triggered it wants to override their wise cortex and go back to old behaviors so let me just give you one example that you can use in a hundred different ways so let's say you're facing a temptation or a craving that could be to relapse to drugs or alcohol food pornography some old behavior an old person anything that's pulling you to go backwards towards an unhealthy is a temptation or a craving so how do you respond to that because your limbic brain has been triggered and it just wants to go with it it's pulling you that way so the first goal is to get out of your limbic brain so to ground yourself to get back into your cortex to play the tape to the end if i give into this craving here's how it's going to play out it might give me instant gratification but it's not going to be very gratifying in a very short time but realize that some people aren't able at that point to just get out of their limbic brain back into their cortex they can't just do it on their own they're not strong enough to do it so we have to add other things to help us manage our limbic brain so for many people what they have to then learn to do is here's the song the beautiful song that my limbic brain is lying to me saying it's beautiful when it's really not that's enticing me i need to distract myself with a more beautiful song i need to do something that is more gratifying satisfying than what it's wanting me to do and so that means i might need to just start thinking about something beautiful i might need to connect with somebody and feel the beauty of connection in a heart-to-heart talk but i need to overpower my limbic brain with another limbic brain experience that's more beautiful then for many people that still isn't enough and what you realize is the only way to get out of my limbic brain is i somehow have to get out of my head i might need to get out of my house to get out of my head i might need to phone somebody and talk to somebody i might need to just find a distraction that just absorbs me and gets me out of my head but i need to do something to get out of my head because i'm not being able successful in just doing it all alone in isolation some people need to build in deterrence accountability so that it gives extra motivation to not give into their limbic brain we also need to think beyond just the limbic brain triggers to i need to build a routine where every day first thing i get myself into a good head space i get myself either to positive limbic brain emotions or i'm managing the limbic brain with chosen attitudes that are positive that becomes very important and so that could be a meditation prayer reading going for a walk listening to music journaling doing things that get me into that positive place the journey of recovery the battles basically are about your limbic brain and so the success of the war is your success in dealing with your limbic brain i hope this has been helpful i hope it's given you some perspective and some tools that will help you in your ongoing journey with your limbic brain that's the end of part one we're gonna take a short break and then i'm gonna come back for part two which is a christian part we know that many aren't interested in that and we're okay with that so if you're not interested we'll see you next week for everybody else i'll be back in just a minute so well welcome back we've been doing a series on the life of abraham the father of israel and last week we saw that god gave him two things that were going to help him remember god's promises god's commitment to him and one of them was the right of circumcision what i want to do today is just look at that symbol that god gave abraham and just analyze that symbol for a little bit so the symbol is basically cutting the foreskin of the men's penis that's circumcision cutting away a piece of flesh so what we begin to realize as we go through the bible it was a physical act but yet it meant way more than just the physical it contained a spiritual meaning a symbolic meaning and that was the main point so to be a jew didn't just mean to be circumcised to be a true jew meant to be a jew of the heart which meant that your heart also needed to be circumcised so let me see if i can explain that to you because it applies to all of us so in romans 2 it says this for no one is a jew who is merely one outwardly in other words who's just been circumcised nor is circumcision outward and physical only but a jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart so in other words a true jew is a person who's cut away the unhealthy pieces of their soul their heart and that's really what recovery is about it is cutting away the unhealthy pieces of our soul it is going through circumcision of our insides our attitudes our behaviors our soul so what does that mean well in deuteronomy 10 it says this therefore circumcise your heart so it's they've already had the physical right of circumcision now moses when he gets ready to die he says i don't want you just to be circumcising your children physically i want all of you to circumcise your hearts and what does that mean stop being stubborn in other words surrender to god submit to god's way what is happening to you israel is you get your limbic brain triggered and you just say i want to do what i want to do i don't care what god wants i just want instant gratification you need to get into your cortex and choose to surrender to god's way because you know it's healthy choose to get out of your limbic brain which is all about instant gratification but leads to terrible consequences so circumcising your heart is choosing to get rid of that self-will stubbornness that just wants what it wants and doesn't care about anybody else and surrenders to god's wisdom about what is healthy and then in chapter 30 deuteronomy it says this the lord your god will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants what does that mean so that you will love him with all your heart and with all your soul and live a couple things i want you to see from that so what we are have in our heart is a heart that loves god but pieces of our heart love other things and say you make me feel alive you give me life if i just adore you and worship you and surrender to you oh you make me totally satisfied will you meet all my needs and it could be a person it could be an activity and so we have parts of our heart that love the wrong things or love the right things but in the wrong way and so we have to cut away those things so that the chief love of our life is god and the second thing is as long as we love the wrong things or the right things in the wrong way we think it will give us life but it gives us death it's only when we circumcise cut those things away and put god in his rightful place in our life then we live so circumcision though it seems painful it seems like it's going to take away things that make life feel alive actually is the only thing that gives life and then in jeremiah 4 it says surrender your pride and power circumcise your hearts before the lord in other words around this heart of ours is this narcissism that says i want what i want i don't care if i hurt others i don't care what they want i don't care about their needs i just care about my needs circumcising that is a humility and so bottom line is this if we don't circumcise our hearts it makes healthy relationships impossible it leads to death not to life so not circumcising our hearts seems like it's a great thing because it gives instant gratification but it leads to death that leads to damaged relationships and so what god is saying is cut away from your character your soul your heart the limbic brain things the limbic brain lies so that you end up choosing healthy boundaries for a healthy life then you live so circumcising your heart is bringing in god's boundaries about what is healthy and living by them so that's the symbol of circumcision now i thought what i'd do is just show you some of the other symbols in the bible that are given to talk about what our relationship with god with our self with life should look like so in israel experience when they were in the desert with moses it's very fascinating because there were 12 different tribes and what they did was they had to position their tents and so how they positioned their tents was a symbol so each tribe was in a part so there were 12 sections of tents one for each tribe but they were formed in a circle around the tabernacle their worship center where god was to dwell and then their tent flop was to face the center so that every morning as they woke up and went out the first thing they saw was god's house god's tent as they went to bed at night and went to close the flap the last thing they saw was god everything in their life was saying make god the center that's how life is designed to work and then god gave them two different miracles on a regular basis every morning there was bread provided from heaven and water to drink and what god was saying was i am the bread i am the water you need bread and water for your physical sustenance but you need me for your spiritual sustenance so take me in every day connect with me bring me into who you are into your life that's the source of life and then he uses the metaphor of a shepherd and a sheep and sheep live out of their limbic brain they're like a child they need a wise shepherd and they need to learn to follow a shepherd to trust his wisdom his care we need that with god to be our shepherd and then they when they were building buildings at that point in time you wanted the buildings to be square you wanted the walls to be straight so how they did that is they carefully picked the cornerstone to make sure that the angles were 90 degrees to make sure that the the parts of the cornerstone were straight and went straight up and straight out and then they lined up every stone after that with the cornerstone and if they lined up every stone with the cornerstone they would have a square building they would have true walls and so what is god saying by that metaphor that symbol line up every part of your life the hundreds of different parts with my design and if you do that then your life will be true and then a final one was the yoke with oxen and they're two oxen in a yoke and you would have the lead oxen and the other oxen and what it was designed to say to us is put yourself in the yoke with god and let him lead and follow him do the things he's doing his way that's how you have a true meaningful life so circumcision every other symbol that god gives to israel says the same thing line up your life with my get rid of the things that get in the way of that circumcise those parts then you will find life let's pray father i just thank you for these symbols that so beautifully and in different ways emphasize the need of our lives to be lined up with you to be surrendered to you to be in connection to you drawing our life from you making you the most important person in our lives i pray that you would help each of us to be doing that today and every day and learning and growing so that it's becoming more and more part of who we are amen well that's the end of another friday thank you so much for being here

Channel: Tim Fletcher

Views: 18,687

Keywords: CPTSD, Complex Trauma, Limbic Brain, Recovery

Id: tnQKK990FXY

Length: 53min 28sec (3208 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021